I think I recognized the problem. The error message (CHDK hostlua project not found!) appears when trying to start keypad.exe directly.

If I use the included Start Notepad++ shortcut, open a CHDK Lua script, and select the CHDK LUA local option from the Macro menu, the script will run until it needs one of the emulated CHDK functions (like new script headers) and the halt with an error.

If I use the included Start Notepad++ shortcut, open a CHDK Lua script, and select the CHDK LUA local keypad option from the Macro menu, the script will throw the CHDK hostlua project not found! error.

(Incidentally, Lua is not supposed to be capitalized - Lua not LUA )

I'm guessing that the config.cmd script is not doing the job properly. My config.ini file is attached - does it look okay?

Update : successfully installed the same package on an older machine that has Win10 upgraded from Win7. The config.ini files are the same on both machines. See my next post.

We have found that under certain conditions the setup paths are not properly recognized. Following hints can help. An update will follow.

I've done/tried almost everything on the list - thanks for putting that together.

Perhaps the shortest route for now would be to manually configure things? Is there a list of what needs to be done? Is it really just changing the three files that contain a path to a vbs script from 'bin\config\...' to '%cd%\bin\config\...'

Or should I study the code in the repository to figure out what else is needed ?

hostlua run with standard user privileges and normaly also the vbs script interpreter "wscript.exe". But some security suites or secure system configurations are blocking wscript.exe.

At first check is vbs code executing is starting up.

You can remove //nologo from config.cmd line 15. In this case you see the icon from wscript.exe on taskbar when configuration is running.ORYou can insert MsgBox "begin configuration" to \bin\config\config.vbs after line 24. Then you get this message when configuration script is starting.

I'm still not entirely over with my plan to get hostlua run with an existing npp installation lol. I might be a bit compulsive about not having two versions of the same software on my computer 😂

Well while doing some googling on finding a good installer for a different project that I want to start, I came across the "Nullsoft scriptable installer system" found here: https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Main_Page

It looks pretty easy to start with and very versatile and might be a good tool to make a perfect installer for this. I think I'll give it a try and see how far I can get...